The Name MIT requires no introduction. The world's most renowned institute name known to almost all graduate students across the Globe- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, the current 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 mile (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin.

The contribution of MIT to the world can be known from the facts - as of 2015, 85 Nobel laureates, 52 National Medal of Science recipients, 65 Marshall Scholars, 45 Rhodes Scholars, 38 MacArthur Fellows, 34 astronauts, and 2 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT. The school has a strong entrepreneurial culture, and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world.

Will it not be a dream for every passionate student to be part of MIT? But only the lucky (and ofcourse the most talented) few get into the Great walls of the MIT campus. However in the year 2001, something great and rather unexpected happened - when most of the universities are thinking of starting online courses on payment,  MIT decided to share the courses and it's content online free for all. This 4th April 2001 article of Newyork times has announced the starting of a new era of free sharing - the emergnce of MIT OpenCourseWare.

15 YEARS of free sharing..

 MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is celebrating 15 years of free and open publishing of MIT course materials. First proposed by the MIT faculty in 2001, OCW now provides access to the educational materials of more than 2,300 MIT courses, reflecting the teaching in all five MIT schools and 33 academic units.

Over 200 million people around the world have used OCW. Because OCW is Creative Commons-licensed, anyone can download and save OCW content, adapt and remix it to meet their needs, and share freely with their friends and colleagues. With website traffic exceeding 2 million visits every month and still growing, OCW is firmly established as a trusted resource for teachers and learners everywhere. 

During these last 15 years, OCW has been a major driver in the open educational resources (OER) movement. First announced in April 2001, OCW began with a “proof-of-concept” website offering 50 courses. In 2005, having published over 1,000 MIT courses, OCW helped launch the OpenCourseWare Consortium. Now called the Open Education Consortium, its nearly 300 higher education institutions and related organizations have freely shared many thousands of courses, open textbooks and other resources, and collaborated to foster widespread adoption of OERs.

Read More on MIT website.

If you are one of those passionate students who want to learn new and do something new- just delve in to -> www.ocw.mit.edu